Clean up! Aisle Two!

Marcus has been feeling a bit under the weather. Finally yesterday he started acting like his old, crazy self. He spent the entire evening holding onto either my hand or Greg’s hand so he could walk around the house. I am so ready for him to start walking on his own more than just a few steps at a time. I am ready to start chasing him instead of following him everywhere. He not only insists on walking to get from one end of the house to the other, but if he wants to get a toy that is five feet away, this requires him to first come to me or Greg, get our hand, stand, and then walk to the toy. I’m tired.

Yesterday after work I was sitting on the floor with him and thought I would attempt to read a few pages of What to Expect: The Toddler Years. Sometimes over the course of an hour I can read a page or two. Sometimes not. Yesterday Marcus saw my book and kept pointing and saying, “Abu.” Apparently this is his new word. (Abu = A Book in case you were confused.) I got an idea and asked him if he wanted to go to his room to get his own book and then we could read together. Hand in hand we walked to his room and selected a book. We walked back to the family room, settled down, and started to read. Marcus flipped through his book a few times and then started pointing in the direction of his room and saying, “Abu.” Back we went to his room to get another book. I could foresee a long night of abu, pointing, and walking back and forth between his room and the family room. This time I got smart. In the past we have had to keep books away from Marcus because he would eat them. He is finally getting through that phase and is now obsessed with flipping through them. So, I grabbed about 25 of his board books and Marcus and I walked back to the family room, found a nice low shelf for them, and sat down to read abu.

We ended up having a bit of a rough evening. Marcus went to bed just like normal and I was just getting settled down and thinking about bed myself. Marcus started crying. He doesn’t usually wake up at night so I waited a few minutes to see if he was just crying in his sleep. I decided to go in and check on him. He was just laying there, crying like he was awake but didn’t want to be. I rubbed his back for a few minutes and he calmed down so I left. Of course, this upset him. He kept doing this whining crying thing, still acting like he was just awake and didn’t want to be. I headed into my bedroom and heard this lovely coughing-yacking sound followed by a really upset crying. I headed back in to find Marcus’s bed with a nice layer of half digested snack on it. I picked up Marcus and yelled to Greg, “Clean up! Aisle two!” I started getting Marcus cleaned up and out of his sleep sack while Greg changed the crib sheets. During that process more of Marcus’s snack ended up on him and on the bathroom floor and probably on me too but I really didn’t have time to check. It took awhile to get him settled. He was quite happy sleeping on me but that wasn’t going to work for the whole night. He is fine again today, just tired from the night before.